Monday 13 April 2009 19.05 EDT
First published on Monday 13 April 2009 19.05 EDT

It is a simple question, but the answer will define English cricket in future. Do you care more about the start of the new County Championship season tomorrow or the Indian Premier League, about to be refloated as a Bombay duck out of water in South Africa this weekend? There is a third option on your ballot paper, entitled "Don't give a toss", but let's assume, for the purposes of the exercise, that you actually have an opinion.

Take your time because this is important. For how much longer can the dear old County Championship stand against the forces of progress and fashion, as hip and trendy as a spinster offering knitting tips on Facebook? An Ashes series, a West Indies tour, the ICC World Twenty20, an English Premier League looming next season ... factor in the recession and the erosion of local newspaper sales, and the umbilical cord between cricket lovers and their nearest first-class county is in danger of fraying like never before.

Some will argue such doomsday scenarios regularly loom but never actually occur, particularly in Ashes summers. It is, to be fair, more than a decade since I approached a publisher and proposed a book on the imminent demise of county cricket. The idea was to be a Bill Bryson from the boundary's edge and write a travelogue which reflected the character and humour of a disappearing world. Players, reporters, umpires and spectators seemed to me to come together annually for an uproarious gang show which bore scant relation to normal adult life. I don't think I've ever laughed louder than in the Lord's press box in the mid-1980s as we listened to a reporter from a Midlands evening newspaper detailing his staggeringly complicated love life. On the Monday morning, in mid-revelation, our bloodhound-eyed colleague was forced to make an emergency dash to the gents at the back of the Warner Stand, where he lay groaning for a very long time. We were in fits even before he slumped back into his seat behind the patrician figure of Trevor Bailey. "I'd leave it for a while, Trevor," he gasped, readjusting his glasses à la Eric Morecambe. "It's like Chernobyl in there."

It is also 36 years this week since I first started scouring the papers for Derbyshire's results, inspired by the fact they had finished bottom the previous year and had a wicketkeeper who not only wore cool blue gloves but, according to legend, never dropped a catch. The deeds of Bob Taylor and the tragi-comic supporting cast of Geoff Miller, Fred Swarbrook and Ashley Harvey-Walker became my personal soap opera, despite the fact I lived 150 miles away. Eventually I even persuaded my parents to drive me up to Queen's Park, Chesterfield. Play, inevitably, was abandoned without a ball bowled. Instead I pleaded to be driven to Heanor Town football ground, a some-time Sunday league venue, and took a blurred snap through a barbed wire fence which cured me instantly of my youthful obsession.

Far pavilions nowadays, thanks to TV and changing tastes, no longer shimmer quite so brightly. Sport in general, not just cricket, is being sexed up and Brazilian-waxed beyond recognition. Take this week's British Open Show Jumping championships. Katie Price (aka Jordan) and Amy Guy (Siren from Gladiators) will be captaining rival polo teams at Birmingham's LG Arena, a scenario which Jilly Cooper might discard as implausible. Snooker is also apparently looking for a snazzier format involving fewer balls. When I was younger it was called billiards. Rugby union has recently headed off drastic experimental law changes intended to simplify the spectacle, but for how long?

Catering for a hard core of anoraks with active imaginations and ordinary social skills, regrettably, is no longer practicable. Which takes us back to the familiar landscape of Thermos flasks, empty grounds and pork pies in Tupperware boxes. No one loves the idea of county cricket more than me. Yet competitions have to be relevant and schedules sympathetic if the Rajasthan Royals are to be repelled. Even if you take the view that the County Championship still breeds future Ashes heroes, how meaningful is a competition that seldom features the country's best players? Kevin Pietersen has had 12 first-class innings for Hampshire in the four seasons since he joined them. Hand on fleece, I cannot claim the two-division county championship stirs me the same way it used to. I suspect I'm not alone.

Augusta's azaleas have plenty of competition

So did Angel Cabrera win his Masters title on "the world's most attractive golf course" (copyright all newspapers)? Augusta, to be sure, is as groomed and manicured as Kelly Brook. But more beguiling than any number of spectacular links courses around the world? I played on a sunlit evening at St Davids in Pembrokeshire the other day and could scarcely tear my eyes away from the blissful views. Waterville in the south-west of Ireland is another vision which, as I recall, also found favour with the American comedian Bob Hope. "Great course," he wrote in a note framed on the clubhouse wall. "Next time I'll come back and try the fairways."

Barcelona's trio give new meaning to word classic

Good luck to Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal in their Champions League quarter-final second legs, but let's keep things in perspective. Completely by accident I caught the first half of Barcelona v Bayern Munich live last Wednesday and, like everyone else, was mesmerised by Lionel Messi, Thierry Henry and Samuel Eto'o. Those first 45 minutes may just rate among the most consummate performances of the 21st century in any team sport. It was less like watching Brazil than spying on Pablo Picasso at work.

Lions' fever reaches Olympian heights

The British and Irish Lions squad will be unveiled a week today with interest so fervid that Sky News will have reporters covering the build-up for seven hours prior to the early-afternoon announcement at a Heathrow hotel. Overkill, maybe, but it is something for the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish FAs to contemplate as they rail against the notion of a GB football team at the 2012 Olympics. Fabio Capello in charge of a team including Ashley Cole, Craig Bellamy and Barry Ferguson? Wayne Rooney rubbing shoulders with the beach volleyballers in the athletes' village? What could go wrong?

Gap on the sofa as Angel completes his triumph

Every year I sit at home in front of the Masters in the certain knowledge that my childhood friend Colin, the world's most opinionated golf and rugby fan, is doing likewise. Not this time, sadly. He passed away suddenly last week, less than two months before the scheduled birth of his first child. For some of us, Amen Corner will never be quite the same.